I'm on Hyperion, which is a midsize/large server, and over here the housing situation seems completely fixed. I just got an apartment yesterday (nearly a week after the patch) and there are tons of apartments left in all areas.

Even better is that our FC mansion is right next to the apartments in the Mists, so all of my FC mates live in the same building. :)

Glad to see this situation has been remedied possibly everywhere except for Balmung! Took long enough, but everyone in my FC seems to be enjoying their new properties.

When I last checked most spots were filled up but not 100% filled, so it's more of a band-aid fix for people who weren't in a FC house or for RP/Alt purposes and needed multiple rooms but didn't want to take up all of their FC slots.

So it didn't solve the housing shortage as people still want ACTUAL houses including house less FCs, but it's a band-aid fix for people who just wanted a mog-house so to speak.

Then again, on most servers that weren't Balmung, housing never did have a shortage unless you had a few people/FC buying up the houses to resell, like on Sargatanas lol.

Until there's a way for them to produce unlimited on-demand normal housing, there will always be a shortage.

It's a design flaw in the system that should have been spotted immediately. In fact it's so obvious, I'd say it would have to be impossible for them not to have known this problem would exist before they implemented it.

____________________________

svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

If there are enough apartments on all servers for everyone, then I consider the matter closed. There's no going back in time and undoing normal housing, and it would be kind of silly just to wipe them out simply because not everyone an have one.

Apartments offer all the benefits with the exception of having a yard to decorate, right?

The only thing that's still an issue if the lack of FC housing, since I don't think a FC can buy an apartment. So far, though, the only real benefit of a FC house is building an airship to go to the Diadem with a pre-formed party -- but nobody goes there, anyway.

If there are enough apartments on all servers for everyone, then I consider the matter closed.

There's quite a big difference between having an Apartment/FC Room and a House, namely the features and benefits of such between the 2 systems so sadly the problem still persists till they figure out something or move everything into an instance, which would kind of go against the general design they wanted initially but it's the ultimate solution.

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Apartments offer all the benefits with the exception of having a yard to decorate, right?

Not having a yard (most decorations you end up getting event wise are exterior furnishing, very few have been interior and the new seasonal trees are exterior), limited slots for interior decorating, not having access to a mailbox, not having access to aetherial stands (FC housing) not having access to a workship (quite required for some even casual features like certain buffs/buff ties (III+) certain crafting material etc) very limited space to work with (some people like having "themes" for their decorating, e.g upstairs/main floor/downstairs being themed.)

So aside Diadem access, houses are still much sought after than a singular room. So there's still quite a lot of FCs out there on bigger servers who want a house and NEED a house in order to actually utilize a lot of features for the FC since your points will drain almost instantly if you continually purchase tier II buffs instead of use excess materials to produce tier III+ buffs via company workshop, which doubles as a way to gain quick exp for non-capped crafters and gatherers in your FC.

So as said, the problem is mostly fixed for those FCless because the apt room and FC room are the same thing, just APT costs 200k more.

Hio's negativity aside, Balmung still has open Apartments and the housing complaints have dropped down to a trickle. Meanwhile, furniture prices have gone up to the joy of craters (which drowned out the decry on the glamour prisms).

And seeming this was the FIRST WAVE of apartments, people having interior decorating has done a lot.

As far as 'more housing plots' complaint. I find this a funny thing, given this is coming from someone who lauded FFXI, which never had yards to begin with.

This was a very good addition to the housing situation. This will change housing with yards into the premium content it was supposed to be, and help to alleviate the housing concerns for the meanwhile. Of course there will always be demand for more plots - but that will not be addressed anytime soon. Most people, at this point, will wind up settling, even if that upsets a small subset.

Kind of proof just finding reasons to attack whatever I write, but keep being bitter ;)

No one was being negative.

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housing complaints have dropped down to a trickle

Meanwhile, housing complaints are still from FCs wanting a house. Which you can't exactly brush off, but that's what happens when you actually interact with more than your little circle on a server, you learn things.

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Meanwhile, furniture prices have gone up

This is due to cross material usage on new items, namely the aquariums, which caused furniture prices on even 'basic' items to go up, but on balmung there's far more gatherer and crafters than any other servers, maybe not all omni-crafters, but the prices bottomed out now that the initial rush is over.

Here's an example:

Terminus putty, this skyrocketed after the update for a short time which is also used in quite a few outdoor furniture. Why would the outdoor furniture go up in price when APT disallows it and no new housing was added?

Because a common item used was part of a new furniture recipe (aquariums.) Gold Ingots SOARED for a while because they're used in new ilvl250 crafting recipes and also in some 'casual items.' So of course everything went up in price after an update to introduce new crafting recipes, this is how it's always been.

The situation is, the problem is not solved and won't be solved until there's housing for everyone. If they remove "Free Company house" requirement on using things like aetherial wheels and the workshop, FC won't complain as much about wanting a house.

I assume you're just FCless to think the complaints, especially on Balmung, is almost non-existent now because one of the bigger linkshells i'm in on Balmung at this very moment are talking about they hope there's enough housing in Ishgard so their FC can actually snag a house.

Hio's negativity aside, Balmung still has open Apartments and the housing complaints have dropped down to a trickle.

This is what I've noticed too. This is the first time SE has expanded the housing system without the OFs being bombarded with angry people complaining about how they got shut out (again). Complaints seem to be down to a trickle, and they don't seem to be coming Average Joe Player. Everyone in my FC seems happy to have homes.

I actually sold my house to a FC member and moved into the unofficial FC apartment building. :) Decorated and I'm pretty happy with it!

Hio, I don't need to find reasons to criticize you on your negativity. You provide them in such ample amounts I can't stand to read your posts for more than a line or two.

I am, in fact, looking for something remotely redeeming when I glance at your posts, however whatever analytical insight you do have is heavily outweighed by the consistent slant you, without fail, always write into your posts.

If it was even just topical, having a singular spin in which your opinions turn upon besides the broadest brush of uniformed criticism - I'd still have a modicum of respect for you. However, there's zero concessions from you. You will spin anything said or done about the game into the negative, and have done little else but bemoan this game the entirety of your tenure here - which baffles the mind on why you remain a part of the community, let alone a paying member of the playerbase.

I've once said this out of concern for you, but now I'm going to be blunt.

Quit.

If not for your own sake then for the others you bring down by your constant negativity. It's long past the point where any previous justification of your remaining in the game would have remained valid in the face of everything you've put down upon. Find other games to play with your friends, ones that meet your standards. It cannot be put any more clearly that this game is not designed around them, and, in fact, has an outspoken design policy contrary to your own philosophy.

The only reasons I can even speculate that you remain run along the themes of addiction and peer pressure - neither of which are healthy for you. And your conduct isn't healthy for others.

So get yourself somewhere you'll be happy already. All you're accomplishing here is spreading misery.

Thayos wrote:

This is what I've noticed too. This is the first time SE has expanded the housing system without the OFs being bombarded with angry people complaining about how they got shut out (again). Complaints seem to be down to a trickle, and they don't seem to be coming Average Joe Player. Everyone in my FC seems happy to have homes.

I actually sold my house to a FC member and moved into the unofficial FC apartment building. :) Decorated and I'm pretty happy with it!

I've the FC household in Mist, from which I only really have any furniture control of the Apartments my alts have on there (my main is a cooperation between myself and my GF as its their 'shared room'). My house in Lavender Beds is meticulously designed to be a story location for roleplay events - and is currently my greatest joy in my whole fashion obsession in the game. And I just got an apartment in Goblet after the rush died down, which I might turn into some sort of custom shop, so I don't have to keep NPCs in my house.

Personally, happy as a clam. I've made out like a bandit when it comes to housing and I darn well appreciate it.

But I keep my ear out on things going on, and right now, housing complaints just aren't there. Today's biggest complaints seem to be focused on the raids being 'too easy' which, honestly, I disagree with as well. They're skill tuned, not gear tuned - like I always wanted. Once my current home crisis is resolved I'll be looking for a static.

But housing? Even if it's a stopgap measure, it was one **** of a stopgap.

It's funny to see Hyrist criticize Hio for being negative when Hyrist is the biggest condescending douchebag on these forums, lol. Stop taking yourself so seriously dude.

Anyway I bought an apartment in the Goblet, but I haven't done anything with it yet. The only piece of furniture I have is that Hildebrand painting from the vet rewards.

I don't take myself as seriously as I take the community, actually. Not that Zam has much of one left, which really is where the social filters just fall off.

I view that it is flatly fair game to turn the scope of improvement upon the group of individuals who believe they're personally above criticism while they can armchair developer, and tear down people who put blood sweat and tears into what they do. Comunity health is as part of the game environment as any UI tool or piece of content, and in games like this can be the make or break point.

Point in case: Our server health.

Balmung and Gilgamesh, our primary unofficial RP server and our secondary RP server with the Primary in unofficial PvP gatherings - are our two largest servers. For all the potential interpersonal dramas it has in and of itself a player-run social tie-in. This is something we created and it greatly impacts the game environment.

So yes, I take debbie downers like Hio a bit seriously, cause they can and have have negative impact overall in that most critical factor.

BTW Hyrist, I'd love to see pics of your different residential units. Same goes for the rest of you -- even Hio's House of Pain. I'll post pics of my apartment later on... haven't decorated my FC room yet, so I'll leave that out.

The situation is, the problem is not solved and won't be solved until there's housing for everyone. If they remove "Free Company house" requirement on using things like aetherial wheels and the workshop, FC won't complain as much about wanting a house.

This is the one issue that upsets me. As a crafter, I'd really like access to the tier 3 buffs.

The situation is, the problem is not solved and won't be solved until there's housing for everyone. If they remove "Free Company house" requirement on using things like aetherial wheels and the workshop, FC won't complain as much about wanting a house.

This is the one issue that upsets me. As a crafter, I'd really like access to the tier 3 buffs.

Exactly, this is a big reason why FCs want a house because the better buffs you can obtain is gated behind housing, thus no matter what they do until they stop gating things behind "FC housing" there will always be complaints and everything will simply be a band-aid fix.

I'll post pics of my Apothecary/Alchemy themed personal house of one of my alts, since I don't know if my FC leader wants pics of their mansion posted without permission.

I know they introduced apartments, but that's not really the same thing. From my understanding they aren't really any different from FC private rooms except they aren't tied to a FC (and its house) but cost a little bit more.

Just apartment introduction and if you really nitpick, the introduction of the "Aquarium System."

Smaller servers weren't as affected to the point you had people ADVERTISING to server transfer there if you want a house lol so it mostly gave people without an FC or house the ability to have a room to decorate, which people focus on more than the fact there's still a large problem mostly related to gated features requiring housing. FC housing specifically.

FC functions, honestly, are cute little additions at best. Aethereal Wheel and Private Airship ventures are the only things that amount to an income of exclusive items above personal housing.

Cross-breeding garden patching and exterior design are really the only things above an apartment from the housing level.

The largest of the complaints, however, was having housing that wasn't dependent on the FC system (And therefore subject to removal by being kicked from an FC) to have. It was repeated over and over again on how FFXI's housing system would have been the obvious solution to this problem - and that's pretty much what we got here.

This isn't so much of a distraction as it addressed what was perceived as the largest issues on people's minds. Small FCs that want houses, or larger ones that did not get access to a plot - still need to get a form of FC housing - but the functions themselves are really not all that attractive - especially as Diadem flopped so hard.

So, sadly, one of my criticisms kinda takes away from this criticism. There's really no true 'FC function' that's broadly attractive right now - even in FC housing. If there was, like say Diadem being what it was hoped to be - there'd be a bit more urgency behind the idea that FCs without houses are jipped on these functions.

The question is, between these two, which should be the higher priority: fixing the housing plot issue for FCs? Or providing content to further value having a housed FC?

My opinion is currently leaning on the former, which this fix did not address. But we already given and idea of the update pipeline - (apartments, ishgardian housing, item limit expansion) and so far things seem to be taking the way they were intended to.

So bluntly - personal housing shortage? Pseudo fixed - anyone who wants their own personal space can have it.

FC function housing - not fixed, twice over as FC housing functioning isn't really lucrative or attractive right now to begin with.

Overall climate of player's feedback - Happy with the apartments, but awaiting further fixes as they were promised down the pipeline.

For the casual player, housing is fixed. Everyone can have a space to call their own and decorate as they please.

Some people will always be waiting for a similar expansion of actual houses, but let's be real -- that's never going to happen, or it would have happened by now. SE screwed up and either over-estimated its abilities or under-estimated the demand. Yep, it happened. Time to acknowledge it and move on.

The only thing SE could do to make housing "fair" would be to take away all the houses and put everyone in the apartments, and that would be silly. Just let people keep what they have -- don't waste resources removing something for no real reason.

I'd say the next step would be making FC condos in the apartment buildings... give them a few extra rooms and all the benefits a FC house would have. And why not fully dive into the "apartment" culture and have shared spaces for regular tenants?

Essentially, the apartments are a big reset button for the housing system. They should have just done this initially, but I'm glad they did it now

I'm fairly sure casual players also join and run free companies too. As I assume the whole "accessibility" argument isn't subjective, there's still quite a lot of benefit to having an FC house that if you happen to run or join a FC that has no housing, you're not getting full use of the FC system. I get what you were trying to say but, I'm fairly sure there's more casual FCs than there are any other kind of focused FCs :p

However, for people who never really seen the benefits of some of the FC housing perks, it makes sense to find it "no big deal", the extra 15 control and craftsmanship is god tier when trying to hit the HQ tier for even patch recipes, especially 3.4's that requires a BASE of 995/955. So people can say "it's just a bonus!" but realistically, they spent so much time and effort (and not to mention resources, resources, resources) pushing "GROUP CRAFTING!" "PERSONALIZED AIRSHIPS!" and a lot of FCs on bigger servers can't even partake in that, even if it's "not important to you it is to others" as a popular saying on ZAM goes but seems to only be said under certain circumstances...

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I'd say the next step would be making FC condos in the apartment buildings... give them a few extra rooms and all the benefits a FC house would have. And why not fully dive into the "apartment" culture and have shared spaces for regular tenants?

Honestly - Look at the GC Barracks for the Squadron system - There's literally nothing stopping them from having the same kind of system in place for a "workshop" for FC's without a house since all a workshop does is allow you to access a bunch of menus in a pretty interface. The airship is just a cutscene that shows your airship parts together and nothing more, since well, it's not like we actually control it, and the levels and route just calculate your % of which ever item(s) you obtain after 18-75 hours.

Considering the next step yoshida said are "mansions" that's supposedly separate from housing, that's when we'll see if they do anything specific, but for now, there's still a fair bit of stuff tied to FC Estates that remains sought after. ****, they could mimic the mog garden system and go a step further to completely negate the need of FC housing and they can't hide behind a lore shield either, because these apartments kind of just "popped out of nowhere" so to speak.

When I say housing is fixed for the casual player, I'm not talking about FCs, for which the system is certainly NOT fixed. I'm referring to Average Joe Player who just wants a home -- a place for furnishings, special items, etc., where in-game friends can come and hang out, or where he can go AFK with his favorite music on the orchestrion. That's all most people do with their homes.

I consider FC housing to be a separate issue, but it shouldn't be difficult to address thanks to the apartment infrastructure.

The FC airship content being gated behind housing was a design mistake. I like the idea of FC condos that can house a workshop. You lose the ability to have outdoor decorations but pretty much nothing else. It's a reasonable compromise to let unlucky FCs still have access to all the content they're supposed to have access to (namely the Diadem) but still let SE have their non-dynamic housing system.

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svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

I don't think individual workshops for each FC would work with the apartment system, but say, a shared one in each apartment would serve the same function anyways, seeming the group crafting is party based to begin with - and it would cut the instance load down to boot.

Not to mention the social element of it - give people a reason to gather together more, give smaller FCs a way to network craters with other smaller FCs, etc. It would make for a good potential community element.

But no - I do agree that FC functions should not be gated to the limited housing spaces we have. I do think we should be able to host some of our functions in our house though.

But I don't take away from what was accomplished with the current apartment system. Balmung's not full... and they never even upgraded it once. That's a major accomplishment given all the other trouble that we went through to get here.

There's no mistaking that there is still a ****-load of work that needs to be done, but I've learned to appreciate the progress made in each area that things are created - because they are such a small, inefficient team - their work tends to be spread thin, and therefore is unappreciated by those with focus concerns.

Wildlings - a old wives tale of people taken by the Elementals of the Twelveswood, never to be seen. An appropriate synonym for the lost warrior of light, in more ways than one. For the Wildlings were, in fact, merely volunteers to vanish from the public to serve the greater good and resit the Garlean invasion anon.

The purpose of the Woods is to look for Eorzea's greater "Wildlings" the hidden and the lost, and to give them a a quiet place of sharing and recognition so that they, both as adventurers and as individuals, would never be forgotten.

Lin's private home, which she has converted into a a hub for investigation on the missing Warriors of Light, and other adventurers that have gone missing over the years. Each book you see is a variance on an Adventurer Log or Unending Journey. With scattered documents journals of Levewatches, and Grand Company records to cross reference. The messiness is to show that Lin's not necessarily a bookish person, so she requires help from others to get the job done. Her main motivation is the remembrance of those lost, and the connection of those still alive.

OOCly, this is designed to be both private abode and hub for small-time roleplay storylines running with the above theme. Lin would be among a group of adventures attempting to uncover the hidden Warriors of Light and locate lost adventurers. It also serves as a place of sharing remembering stories.

In spite of its small size, it is design to host a good number of people in small, intimate groups in order to encourage communication and sharing. As life is starting to settle a bit, I will be putting some work in to organize small events for people to attend and do just that. I've already got a few waiting for me to kick it into gear, but some unexpected RL problems have taken my attention and drive. Thankfully that is over and I'm excited to start pushing this event forward.

Aside form that, I've a Free Company Hall, with multiple private rooms, but they're currently under renovation to accommodate new furniture and designs. And my new apartment which I'm not sure what to convert it into yet. So, stay tuned on that.

Meh, I have a small house in the Lavender Beds, so I don't really care if they ever fix it.

Yup, I'm selfish like that.

As to decorations, I've kept it simple on the outside. I've got a garden that I don't use much anymore, a chocobo stable, the pink tree from that weird Japanese little girl event and few other plants, with a teleport crystal off to the side. On the inside, I really haven't done much to the top floor. I just toss random event rewards in there. Downstairs I put in an Oriental tub and bunch of plants. I was going for a kind jungle oasis feel, but I don't think I've got the look down. I keep thinking I'll spend some time on a redecoration, but I never do.

Since I can craft my own furniture and can gather all the ingredients, I've actually made a tidy little pile of gil off of my decoration attempts. It's too bad that the new aquariums require the Master books that I haven't had the time to even start working on getting or I'd have a couple of those in there too.

While the housing 'issue' in XIV didn't really come as a shock, I never really cared about player housing so it didn't affect me. Seemed kinda odd to me to spend time in a virtual house as I sat in my physical house. I was always out in the world whether it be leveling, camping, farming or otherwise.

For me to feel like player housing was meaningful, would be if it had purpose. I went to my mog house in XI when I needed mail, something from storage, a job change.. you know, the **** you needed to do there. When I was done I either logged out or left. Even with neat furniture it was always 'colder' than it was outside in the world.

As for group housing, I think they could have done more to give it purpose. I'm not against housing, but I just don't see anyone really trying to make it useful.

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Rinsui wrote:

Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:

30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:

Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.

I think like with many other aspects, yoshida is too afraid to do certain things "too soon/at all" and in in regards to housing, a lot of what they do is more taking into consideration emptier servers (which most servers outside of the main populated ones are near ghost towns). I mean, they're holding inventory expansion hostage with the next expansion (similar to level increase was held hostage despite being more than able to hit 60 outside of HW), something they can do at any time, so that kind of pushed the "Mannequin' system back they talked about which they said would have been similar to XI's in the sense it added inventory slots to your housing and gives you a mean of dressing it up and posing it.

I honestly think we won't see a real housing update until during the expansion, or as the main focus of 3.5 since that's going to have to hold us over for 5-7 months for 4.0 to come out.

Looks like SE shot down a logical change to put less weight on "needing" FC housing.

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Airship workshops won’t be added to apartments or private housing. They’re specifically created for free companies. Free company crafting content will be updated further. Giving it to single players would defeat the purpose of granting it to free companies.

So while it makes sense it's a FC thing...as long as housing will always be in short supply on servers with an actual population, changing it to being an 'instance' would have at least sufficed.

What I don't get, and here's me agreeing with you Hio. Is that they have an apartment system. What programming hurtle do they need to leap in order for FCs to access a sort of public Airship/Workbench that's restricted to Free Companies using them?

I think they're hiding some botched up coding here. I think they did a bad and tied all the FC crafting functions to the housing system, withtout a way for it to recognize individual FCs independently of it. In which case, they would have to write an entire coding branch in order to make public workshops operate for multiple FCs, instead of putting the typical housing ownership "Stamp" on the room itself, which I think is what they did for ease of workflow.

This just goes to show that they're not really future-proofing their content, which is a criticism that I have with most programmers, let alone SE - something I'm sadly familiar with.

What I don't get, and here's me agreeing with you Hio. Is that they have an apartment system. What programming hurtle do they need to leap in order for FCs to access a sort of public Airship/Workbench that's restricted to Free Companies using them?

My guess is the way the workshop system is structured prevents a workshop from doing more than one thing at a time. So they'd need new instancing tech to create multiple workshops not attached to a single building, usable by multiple FCs simultaneously.

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I think they're hiding some botched up coding here.

Basically this.

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This just goes to show that they're not really future-proofing their content, which is a criticism that I have with most programmers, let alone SE - something I'm sadly familiar with.

Yeah that's pretty apparent at this point. Very little thought is being put into extensibility when these systems are designed which is a MAJOR problem when working on a living game.

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svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

I dunno, it does feel as simple as "We want FCs to matter!" despite a stubbornness to acknowledge that not everyone fits snugly into online communities and all that entails. Such tends to carry the impetus that they hope to be able to strongarm people into the content in question by maintaining the exclusivity, but you're still going to get resentment.

More on housing on the whole, I don't believe it fixed until all features are available to everyone and investments are never at the threat of loss due to inactivity. As per old debates, that's all on SE and how they chose to (poorly) code the system(s). Heck, putting anything useful beyond vanity was probably big mistake, too.

What I don't get, and here's me agreeing with you Hio. Is that they have an apartment system. What programming hurtle do they need to leap in order for FCs to access a sort of public Airship/Workbench that's restricted to Free Companies using them?

I think they're hiding some botched up coding here. I think they did a bad and tied all the FC crafting functions to the housing system, withtout a way for it to recognize individual FCs independently of it. In which case, they would have to write an entire coding branch in order to make public workshops operate for multiple FCs, instead of putting the typical housing ownership "Stamp" on the room itself, which I think is what they did for ease of workflow.

This just goes to show that they're not really future-proofing their content, which is a criticism that I have with most programmers, let alone SE - something I'm sadly familiar with.

That's pretty much the gist, SE coding has always been weird, which is why a lot of "PS2 limitations" vanished when new programmers looked at XI's coding recently (past 3 years apparently.) They already have the framework where they could move away from must have housing basically, but considering the other issues this client has had in the past (session editing and the servers agreeing to it for example, which is still possible now) it doesn't surprise me they might need to overhaul something more beyond gameplay systems lol.

I can understand the worry if they tied it to an NPC similar to PoTD and the overuse might cause the servers to run sluggishly, but since the game didn't keel over with the PoTD system, it certainly wouldn't if they did something similar to that for a public workshop, since "single players" still can be a part of an FC, they just might not have a house and thus no access whatsoever. All they realistically need is to add a selection to go to "Company/Public Workshop" from the apartment lobby or even at your GC/somewhere in a city since he also said during the Fan Fest live letter that you're going to a different zone (obviously) so it's not like it matters.